


lex parsimoniae

by Muir_Wolf



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-03 22:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2890652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I’ll go by myself,” she says, just like he knew she would.  Two years, and she still won’t ask him for help, even when they both know it’s an open offer.  Two years, and he’s still by her side, whether or not either of them like it.  He sighs, because this is a dumb as hell idea, but he’s got a soft spot for dumb as hell ideas.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	lex parsimoniae

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galfridian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/gifts).



~~| | | | |~~

Raven scrapes her hair back into a ponytail, her fingers deft and quick. Wick watches her, his fingers drumming impatiently on the table between them.

“You’re sure?” she asks finally, her hands dropping back down to her sides.

“You ran the numbers,” he says. “We want to set up long range transmissions between Alpha Camp and where Clarke and Bellamy want to set up Beta Camp, that’s where we need to place the relay.”

She leans her hands against the table, looking over the maps. It’s been two years since they returned to the ground, and it’s taken nearly that long for them to stabilize their situation. Mount Weather has been handled, and the tentative peace treaty with Lexa has held. Clarke and Bellamy have been chafing at the bit for months now, waiting for the council to approve their starting a second camp. Lincoln and Octavia had scouted the surrounding area, and found a viable location some forty miles away—uncontrolled by any Grounder camps, close enough to Alpha that they could fall in to protect each other if needed, but enough distance between the two that Clarke and Bellamy would be able to form their own council.

(While it hasn’t actually been spoken out loud, everyone knows the real reason why a second camp is being discussed: yes, it’s difficult to find enough farm land around Alpha to support them, but ever since the Ark crashed to Earth, they’ve been split into two groups. There are those that support the old council, and there are those that would follow Clarke and Bellamy to whatever end. Not just what’s left of the original 100 in the latter, either: those kids had families that were reunited only because Clarke and Bellamy kept them alive. And that’s not even counting those that have been personally saved by "Clarke’s council"—the inner circle of Bellamy, Raven, Jasper, Monty, Mel, Monroe, Miller, Octavia, Lincoln. Wick.)

“They’ll never go for this,” Raven says, still looking at the map. Wick shifts forward until he’s leaning over the table, too, his hands opposite hers. The place he’s marked out on the map is in Grounder territory, yes, but not anyone they’ve got treaties with. Lexa’s warned them away from the Red River clan.

“If Bellamy and Octavia take us—” Wick starts, but Raven shakes her head, still frowning down at the map.

“Bellamy’s with Clarke at the trade talks with the Valley clan, and Octavia’s on hunting patrol with Lincoln this week. And we can’t go through Abby or Kane with this, they’d never go for it.”

“So we wait until they’re done,” Wick says. He doesn’t know why he bothers, when he can already tell where this is heading by the glint in Raven’s eye, but he does anyway.

“And lose our intel? The Guards were out with the Grounders last week to inspect the borders of both territories, and Lexa and Kane mapped out where the Red River camps are right now. But that’s only right now. Give it a week or two, and they could change position, and jeopardize everything.”

“So just say it, Reyes,” he says, still leaning forward on the table but lifting his head up to meet her eyes, so there’s less than a foot between their faces. The corner of his mouth twists up, just a little, as he waits.

“I’ll go by myself,” she says, just like he knew she would. Two years, and she still won’t ask him for help, even when they both know it’s an open offer. Two years, and he’s still by her side, whether or not either of them like it. He sighs, because this is a dumb as hell idea, but he’s got a soft spot for dumb as hell ideas.

“When are we leaving, then?” he asks.

(Dumb as hell ideas aren’t the only thing he’s got a soft spot for, it turns out.)

~~| | | | |~~

They leave in the early morning, before the night guard comes off duty. Raven’s got enough authority in the camp that no one questions her leaving with Wick and her tools in tow—she’s always off saving the world in one way or another. Wick figures nobody will realize they’ve disappeared without any authorization for at least a day—maybe two, since Clarke and Bellamy are out of camp, and they have a history of okaying missions without looping Abby or Kane into the conversation.

Raven still wears a brace, but she’s gotten used to walking in it, and she keeps a collapsible cane in her pack in case it starts bothering her. Wick’s design, of course. Not that he’s the sort to brag.

They move in a comfortable silence, too many hours spent working in the same small space to not be used to each other. Too long to not learn how to accommodate each other, either: Wick knows when she needs a rest but won’t say, and Raven knows when Wick’s got too many ideas bouncing around in his brain and needs distracting.

They stop for breakfast, they stop for lunch, they move from their territory to Lexa’s. Officially they haven’t gotten permission from her to move through her lands, but unofficially they’ve all saved each other’s asses enough that Lexa would never call them on it.

Not that they have any intention of running into anybody during this joyride.

~~| | | | |~~

They camp overnight, taking turns on watch. Just because Grounders aren’t trying to kill them doesn’t mean the rest of the planet is quite so at peace with them: people aren’t the only things that go bump in the night.

Wick watches her in the moonlight filtering through the trees, their fire long since banked. She shifts in her sleep, her face a fleeting grimace of pain, and he leans forward, his hands gentle as he slides his blanket beneath her bad leg, elevating it slightly. He moves back as soon as it’s done, not looking to having her punch him in the face if she wakes up with someone leaning over her. She softens, though, her face going lax as she settles firmly back into sleep, and he goes back to sketching out his latest designs for hover-transport over the uneven terrain. 

When he wakes her up a few hours later, she looks between her bedroll and him, her face unreadable in the darkness. Finally she snags his blanket and holds out a hand, silently asking him to pull her to her feet. She wraps herself in his blanket against the chill, and nods him towards her already set-up bedroll. He crawls in, unwilling to break the weighted silence growing between them, and when he shuts his eyes all he can feel is the warmth her body left, all he can smell is her.

~~| | | | |~~

It starts raining mid-morning on the second day. By all accounts they aren’t due for rain for at least another couple days, but Wick’s never seen one of the 100’s half-cocked plans go off smoothly, so he can’t say he’s surprised. Raven’s leg tends to act up whenever it rains, though, and it’s only worse when the dirt beneath their feet starts to turn to mud. They’re near the boundary between the clan’s, now, and Raven doesn’t want to stop.

“And what do we do if we get jumped by the River clan?” Wick asks, shoving wet hair back from where it’s starting to slick down his forehead.

“That’s not going to happen,” she says. “They don’t have a camp anywhere near here.”

“Because they don’t have hunting parties,” he says.

“In this weather?” she asks. She smiles a little, her eyes impish. “C’mon, Wick, where’s your sense of adventure?”

There is no possible way that _Raven Reyes_ is trying to out-fun him. He’s the fun one, she’s the grumpy one, everybody knows that. The only time she has fun is when she’s dragging him into something that’s probably going to get him killed, which doesn’t bode well for his immediate future, but he’s never been able to resist a dare, especially when it’s issued with a raised eyebrow and a half-mocking smirk.

“Lead on,” he says, pretending that the rain isn’t dampening his spirits, despite the fact that it’s dampening near everything else. He grabs her arm, though, the second time she slips in the mud. “Not letting the only one who’s getting me out of here alive knock herself out,” he says, gruff, when she starts to protest.

“I’ll knock _you_ out,” she mutters underneath her breath, and he grins at her, wide and would-be-guileless.

“C’mon, Reyes,” he says, “you know you already do.”

He does enjoy it when she goes red. Wind-chill factor, or no.

~~| | | | |~~

It's late afternoon when they set the relay up, but by the time they finish the rain is coming down in a true downpour. He’s braced against her in the tree, holding a sheet of plastic above her so she can work without the rain in her eyes, and hoping, less obviously, to keep her steady when the wind really starts going.

They clamber back down the tree, his hands on her waist, but now the storm’s bad enough that their visibility is shot to hell.

“We’re gonna have to find shelter!” he says, half-shouting into her ear because the wind’s snatching even their voices away. She nods.

“Follow me!” she says, but on the first step she staggers, and he grabs her again, too wet and frustrated to feel the full impact of his hand sliding under the edge of her shirt. He grabs her arm and slings it around his neck, tucking her into his side, his arm steady around her back.

“We always do work best together,” he yells down at her, trying to take the sting of helplessness off of her, and he’s surprised to see her looking up at him with an odd, intense expression. She nods.

“Let’s go,” she says.

~~| | | | |~~

She takes them to an old Jeep—half-buried underneath branches and leaves—that Kane found when checking the territory. The wheels are done for, and the outside is rusted, but it’s still got all its window and doors, and when they clamber in the backseat the wind and rain don’t follow them. He sees blankets in the way back, but turns to look out the window, trying to see how badly the rain’s coming down, and if there looks like there’s any break in the clouds. Next to him, he can feel Raven radiating with an odd intensity, just like before.

“Why are you here, Wick?” she asks. It’s a dumb question, and Wick’s never had any patience with dumb questions, so he doesn’t answer. He keeps looking out the window, instead, trying to ignore the wet clothes that are sticking to his skin. Raven’s hand settles on his chin, though, and she tugs him around until he’s looking at her. “I asked you a question,” she says. Her voice is sharp, but her fingers are firm but gentle against his skin, and her eyes—

“You know the answer to that,” he says.

“What if I don’t?” she asks. He shifts in his seat, unwillingly turning a little more towards her. Drawn to her like he can’t help himself, he thinks, and leans back against the seat with something like defeat.

“Simplest answer is usually the right one,” he says. “And I’m a pretty simple answer when it comes to you.”

She doesn’t move, doesn’t drop her hand, just keeps looking at his face, as if trying to assure herself that whatever she sees there, she’s got it right. But there are no rights or wrongs here, nothing but the two of them and the storm outside, nothing but wet clothes and cold air and the steady way she holds his chin, the unsteady way he’s keeping himself from leaning into her.

“There’s blankets in the back,” he says at last, turning from her gaze, and from her silence. “We should get out of these wet clothes and try to warm up. Ladies first,” he adds, not even bothering with the obligatory leer. “I promise not to peek.”

She looks down at her body, and his gaze follows her, his eyes stuttering on the way her clothing is sticking to her curves. She swallows thickly, and he swallows, too, warmer than he was a moment ago. She lets go of his chin, still looking down at herself, and then she jerks in the seat to get a look at the back.

“Think I might need your help,” she says, her voice low, the softest hint of self-loathing in there that he’d thought she’d beaten out months and months ago. It takes him only a moment for his higher thought process to kick back in and override his decidedly lower thoughts, and he realizes what she means: her pants are sticking to her skin, they’re in barely movable quarters, and her leg was bothering her before this started, so he can only imagine how bad it is now. He wavers, uncertain whether a joke will take the edge off or just get her back up.

“Thought you’d never ask,” he says, trying to keep his voice light without dipping into something dirty. Which, it might be said, is no mean feat when Raven’s unbuttoning her pants half a foot away from him. He shifts in the seat and grabs one of the blankets, draping it over her lower half. She shifts back against the door, turning her hips towards him, and then meets his eyes and nods. His hands slide underneath the blanket until they meet hers, and she guides them to the edge of her pants, and every millimeter of his skin is aware, every inch of him is crackling. But that’s not what this is, and that’s not who they are, and so he peels her pants off of her, stopping only to take off her brace and her shoes.

She’s panting when he’s done, her hands fisted in the blanket, her forearms shaking with trying to swallow the pain whole. He wants to wrap her up in his arms, but he tries to let her save face instead, focuses on half-standing and leaning forward into the front seats and draping her pants over the dashboard to dry. He glances back at her to ask if she can do her shirt while he’s up here, and then freezes. Her eyes are _very_ much south of his equator, and letting her save face when she’s in pain, damn straight, but this? Hardly.

“Reyes,” he barks, “are you lookin’ at my ass?”

She bites her lip and jumps a little, but her eyes are sparkling as she meets his, the tension of before rolling off of her.

“That’d be implying you had an ass to look at,” she smirks.

“Hey,” he says, still braced in a half-stooped position, and well aware that he probably looks every inch the fool, “how _dare_ you disparage my ass. It’s a good ass. I’ve fielded many a compliment for it.”

She tilts her head to the side, examining it, and then she shrugs a shoulder. “I sit corrected,” she says. “It’s passable.”

He chuckles, shaking his head. “Give me your shirt so I can sit back down on my passable ass, will you?” She meets his eyes, her head still tilted slightly to the side, and then strips her shirt off in one swift move, breaking eye contact only when the shirt obscures her vision. He stares at her, stunned, and then his hand slips on the dash and he barely catches himself before falling.

She tosses the shirt at him. “Your turn,” she says, finally lifting the blanket up to cover her bra and keep herself warm.

He lays her shirt on the dash, and then shifts back in the backseat, tugging off his shirt before he’s fully seated. He’s uncomfortably aware of her gaze, and even more uncomfortably aware of the always well-timed arrival of an erection, so he slides his shoes off, first.

“Where’d you get that?” she asks, sharp, and he looks back up at her just in time to see her hand connect with his side, her skin cool against his. He jumps, despite himself. She’s tracing a scar from about a year ago—Abby stitched it, so it’s healed clean and tidy, but even she couldn’t erase it entirely.

He shrugs. “Got knifed,” he says. “Not my finest moment.”

“But why didn’t I hear about it?” she presses. “This is from Earth, right? It doesn’t look that old.”

“When you…” he pauses, clears his throat. “I went with Bellamy and Clarke and the Guards when you and Octavia disappeared during that Reaper capturing mission,” he says. “Dumbest fucking decision, Kane barely saved my life. There’s a reason why I don’t leave Alpha, I’m a bad shot. Give me a bar fight any day, right?”

“You were part of that rescue mission?” she asks, still inspecting the scar.

“Unnecessary rescue mission,” he says, “what with you two never being captured.”

“Why did I never hear about this?” she asks, something fierce in her voice, and he shrugs again.

“We caught too many Reapers at once—we didn’t have enough hands on deck to detox all of them, Lexa’s people were all through camp helping and getting in the way and finding their loved ones, it was a fucking mess. What does it matter? Last time I checked, you’re not my keeper, Raven.”

“You can’t have it go both ways,” she says, her palm flat over his scar, her eyes back on his. “You don’t get to play my keeper and then balk at me.”

“I’m not trying to be your keeper,” he says.

“Then what are you trying to be?” 

“Your friend!” he says. “I’m trying—no, I’m not _trying_ , I _am_ your friend.”

“And is that why you’re here?” she asks. She shifts, and the blanket slides off one shoulder, leaving it bare, and Wick’s eyes dart to it. He growls a low, frustrated sound, and then grabs a blanket from the back, breaking her contact with his side. He lifts his hips and shoves his pants down and off, throwing them in the front, so they're both dressed only in their underwear and blankets, on the same footing.

“I told you,” he says, “you already know the answer to that.”

She looks at him for a long, steady moment, as if bracing herself. “Is that the same answer to why you went out on a rescue mission you had no business being on, and then kept it from me, even though we’re supposed to be partners?” she asks at last.

“Are we? Partners?”

“I don’t see anyone else here, do you?” she asks. He rubs his wet hair back from his forehead again, frustration dogging his heels at the way she can twist him around.

“I’ve only got the one answer for you,” he says. “But I think we better save it until the storm stops, and you’ve got space to run.”

“When have you ever known me to run, Wick?” she asks, and this time she lets the blanket drop down to her lap. He groans and reaches for her, retreats. 

“I’m about as open a book as you can ask for,” he says, “but you’re quite a bit less so. Spell it out for me.”

“Get your passable ass over here,” she says, her eyes warm but her voice just the littlest shaky, and he surges towards her. Some of her hair’s fallen out of her ponytail between the wind and rain, and he keeps his weight off of hers so as not to jostle her leg, and he’s fairly certain she’s never been more gorgeous than she is in this moment, wet and water-logged and reaching for him.

He kisses her once, twice, a hundred times, trying to tell her with touch all the things she always refuses to hear. A tree branch knocks into the Jeep and they startle and finally pull apart, laughing. He bumps his nose against her cheek.

“If you don’t think kissing you isn’t the simplest answer in the world, Raven Reyes, then you aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are,” he says.

“I should’ve known you’d have _lines,_ ” she says, her eyes so fucking fond it about does him in, and he smiles crookedly, and lets her gravity pull him back in.

~~| | | | |~~

**Author's Note:**

> (This was written for a double blind, which is why the titling & formatting is a little different than I usually choose, haha)


End file.
